you don't have to call me yours
by moonteeth
Summary: It's really quite simple: she's an expert in taking his heart in her hands and squeezing it dry until he's just a bag of skin and bones at her feet, and he lets her. She could destroy him completely and he'd let her. / or, Lucas is totally in love with Maya, and Maya - well. She's still trying to figure it out.


**a/n:** Y'ALL. i don't know what happened. this was supposed to be a cute lil lucaya fic but then it turned into a Lucas-centric angst fest with heavy undertones of rilaya. i'm sorry.

 **disclaimer** : i own nothing.

 **p.s.** title is taken from 10am, Gare Du Nord by the lovely keaton henson. listen to his stuff if you wanna get a feel for this story.

 **p.p.s.** i'm so bad at rating so i'm leaving it M just in case. if you think i should lower it please let me know!

* * *

The first time he meets her it's a Tuesday. He remembers this because he has a health class on those mornings so he always stops at the campus coffeehouse to grab a mocha latte right after. But, just his luck, it was raining that day so he had to hide underneath the canopy until it let up.

She's sitting in one of the tables outside, completely disregarding the fact that she's getting drenched from the rain, her hair matted to the nape of her neck, her mascara smudged around blood shot eyes. She looks detached from reality, like she's experiencing some out-of-body phenomena, and maybe that's why he goes over to her, cautiously, as he would a wounded animal.

"Hey," he greets her. She doesn't look up, but he sees her tiny hands tighten on the arms of the chair. "Hey, are you okay?"

She clears her throat and tries in vain to paint on a smile. "Fine. I'm fine."

"Well, you don't look fine," he says, a crease between his brows. "Why don't you come inside? It's pouring and you're getting all wet - "

"Fuck, dude, why do you even care?" she snaps then, hostility clear in her tone. Lucas sees her blue eyes darken as she glares at him but he doesn't scare easy. "Just leave me alone."

"You're gonna get yourself sick," he continues. He doesn't know why he's trying, but something about her draws him to her. He doesn't try to figure out what it is.

The blonde clenches her jaw and looks away, muttering, "Doesn't fucking matter."

Lucas tries a different approach. He sits in the chair opposite her, the one underneath the canopy, and pushes his coffee cup towards her. "Why don't you tell me about it?"

"Tell you about what?" she replies flatly, pointedly not looking at him or the olive branch he sent her.

"What happened," he says. "Tell me what happened."

It takes her a couple moments but she finally looks at him and he ignores the way his heart drops at the sight of all the life draining from her eyes. She looks at him wearily, not entirely sure whether to trust him or not, and he understands, because who the fuck is he - some random dude with apparently nothing better to do with his time than talk to pretty girls with sad eyes.

"I'm Lucas by the way," he tells her, and grins. His mama used to tell him how easily he could go through life with a smile like that, how he'd have anyone eating out of the palms of his hands. He isn't so sure she's right. "Lucas Friar."

This is the first time he's seen her smile and, even if it's just a little one, he counts that as a victory. "We got ourselves a Ranger Rick," she responds with just a little sarcasm. It makes him wonder if he just saw a glimpse of her real self - the smirk at the corner of her lips, the biting edge to her words. He wants to see more of that, to chip away the grief that softens her edges.

"What about you?" he asks.

"I'm Maya. Definitely not a Ranger Rick, if that's what you're asking."

Lucas smiles in response, watching as her hand curls around the coffee cup, bringing it up to her lips. He figures she's not the type to say thank you, not because she's ungrateful, but because she's not exactly sure how to show it without thinking it as a sign of weakness. He knows girls like her. His mother warned him about girls like her. With a sharp-toothed, cherry red lipsticked grin and a sword for a tongue, Maya is definitely someone he should stay away from. The thing is, he's always been attracted to trouble.

"I had a fight with my best friend," she tells him, and it catches him off guard because he really didn't think she would. "That's why I'm all...like this." She gestures to her disheveled appearance.

He nods his head so she knows he's listening.

Maya runs her fingers through her hair and moves her chair next to him, away from the rain, before continuing. He gives her his jacket and she gives him a smile. "I punched a guy for calling her all these nasty names - that she's a ditz, that she'll never amount to anything - and I got so _mad_ because she's one of the smartest people I know and he had _no right_ saying that kind of shit to anyone but _especially_ not to Riley. But she got angry with me, saying that I didn't have to punch him, that I should've just ignored him, that she was okay - but I _wasn't_ , I wasn't okay and she just - "

She wraps the jacket tighter around her, something flashing in her eyes - guilt, anger, sadness - and she takes a deep breath. "Sorry, I'm...No one should talk to Riley like that." She says this quietly.

Something clicks in Lucas' mind and he stares at her, wondering if she has even made the realization herself. Her hands are trembling underneath her sleeves, lips chapped and bitten with worry. "You love her."

"Yeah, she's my best friend."

"No, I meant - "

"And she's always fucking _doing_ this," she continues like he didn't even say anything. This is what she needs, he realizes, somebody else to talk to, somebody to listen. "She's always been the more rational one, the one who fixes the things that I always break."

"Maybe she just wants to fight her own battles," he says. He doesn't know anything about these two girls, but he's trying. He thinks it has something to do with the way her hair catches the light and her blue eyes like a dusky sky. "Maybe she doesn't want you to always be the one to protect her. Maybe she wants to be the one to protect herself."

"But that's the thing," she says. His heart breaks three times over at the look on her face – a little helpless, a little desperate. "I can't help it. I'm always going to want to protect her."

/

It's six months later and Maya Hart is lying on his bed, a bowl of pretzels balanced on her stomach and her feet on his lap, as she watches him watching some football game she doesn't care about. Every time his team makes a point, he jumps up excitedly and her feet slip off, but he grabs them and puts them back on his thigh once he's sat back down.

Riley's sitting in his desk chair, also watching the game with enthusiasm that could match Lucas', and he sees how Maya looks at her. In the time that he's known them, he's come to acquire a lot of information about these two very different girls. How they would do absolutely anything for each other, how they support each other unconditionally, how they love each other. He's never seen their kind of love before, how deep it runs. How permanent it is.

"Yo, Farkle!" Maya yells to the kitchen. "Grab me a coke before you come back in!"

"Already on it," Farkle replies with a half-smirk as he tosses her a soda can and she catches it easily.

"You're a gift," she says with a cheeky grin, popping the lid open. It always surprises him how easy she fits into his life, like she was always meant to be here, like there was this empty spot he didn't know was there until she occupied it.

Maya wiggles her toes and he sneaks a glance at her to see that she's looking at him, a smirk on her lips. "Whatcha thinking about so hard over there, Hopalong? Your team made two touchdowns already."

"I'm so glad you've finally learned the proper football terminology," he says instead.

"See, I know things."

Lucas rolls his eyes as she crunches on a handful of pretzels, feels that familiar softness he has for her warm his insides.

"You guys are _so_ cute," Riley interjects, a knowing smile on her face, her hands folded close to her chest. "Can I be the maid of honor at the wedding?"

"Hey now," Maya says with a grin. "You know you're the only one for me, Riles. If anything, _Lucas_ is gonna be the maid of honor at _our_ wedding. Ain't that right, Huckleberry?"

"As long as I get to wear a pretty dress," he says, keeping his tone light. He sees Maya grinning at Riley, and he knows that there weighs some truth to that. Maya's always going to love Riley, whether she realizes it or not, and he doesn't think he can compete with that. Doesn't think he wants to. He's happy as long as she is.

"I'll marry you, Lucas," Farkle chimes in, with a definitive nod of his head. "But only because Riley is taken."

"I love being everybody's second choice."

Maya lets out a laugh, the kind that makes him think everything's how it's supposed to be. Maybe it is. She leans up and plants a kiss to his cheek. "This is what happens when you're Ranger Rick - riding bulls, giving birth to horses, and tipping cows - "

"Hey, I would _never_ tip a cow - "

She plays with the hair at the nape of his neck, feels her nails scrape the skin there, and he still has to get used to this. The casual touches she seems to be so fond of. "Oh right, I forget we have Mr. Perfect in our presence - "

"No, just a decent human being who respects a cow's right not to be tipped."

Maya bites her lip to stifle a laugh, and he sees the gleam in her eyes, and he thinks maybe she has enough room in her heart to love two people at once. It's certainly big enough, no matter what she likes to tell herself.

/

She likes to draw him often. Sometimes it'll be just the two of them in his dorm room, Riley taking Farkle out for ice cream and Zay tagging along because everyone knows he's got this huge crush on Riley, and he'll be sitting at his desk working on a research paper or chemistry homework and she'll be on his bed with her sketchbook and lead smudges on the inside of her wrist. The only thing he'll hear for the next two hours is the typing from his laptop and scratch marks on rough paper.

She doesn't ever let him see it though, always telling him that it's not done yet, that it has to be perfect before he gets to look at it, and he doesn't know how many times he has to tell her that he doesn't care if it's perfect or not he just wants to know how she sees him.

And other times, it'll be the five of them in one of their dorms or studying in the library or getting hot chocolate at Topanga's, and Maya'll get this urge to draw. When this happens, she secludes herself from the group conversation, choosing to sit quietly, in her own world, sketching whatever she needs to.

Sometimes it'll be him, and he'll know because when he looks at her, like he always does, her eyes will already be on him. And it's like she won't even register the fact that he's looking at her because she's concentrating solely on the details of him so she can transfer it onto paper. Sometimes she'll be staring at his hands, or his arms, or his mouth, and it makes it that much harder to pay attention to the topic of conversation. He's always wondering what she's thinking about in that brilliant little mind of hers. Wonders if he occupies any space in it at all.

"Show me your drawings," he says to her one night. They're sitting out on his balcony past curfew, the stars blinking above them, and it's a cold night. He can see goosebumps on their arms.

Her sketchbook is sitting on her lap, closed, and she sighs. Maya hands it over to him without a word and he stares at her because he wasn't actually expecting her to agree this time.

"You sure?" he asks, just because he feels like he needs to.

She shrugs. "If you wanna see it, go ahead."

His heart beats in his ears as he takes the proffered book from her hands. Carefully, like he's afraid it's going to break, he flips through the pages. There's a lot of landscapes, some rough sketches of the night sky from outside her balcony, some random scenery from around campus, some snapshots of unfamiliar faces. And then he gets to the portraits. He feels a sharp sting in between his rib cage when he sees the first one being Josh Matthews. He refuses to believe it's jealousy.

"That was a long time ago," he hears her say, like she has to explain herself to him even though she doesn't.

Lucas flips the page, and there's Riley. He knows how she sees Riley, but the drawing only acts as justification. All this light, all this love in the form of tiny hearts pouring out from the pretty brunette. He feels like he's falling face first on pavement. He clears his throat. "You're not too bad at this art thing, Maya."

He sees a smile pulling at her lips. "Thanks. I did that one – a lot of them— in middle school for art class. I only recently just got back into drawing." She pauses like she's considering something. "Around the same time I met you, actually."

He feels like that should be an important thing to cling on to but he can't tear his gaze away from the drawing in his hands. He starts to doubt himself - maybe he shouldn't look anymore, maybe this is a mistake, maybe this is too personal. Maybe he should've kept his mouth shut.

Lucas flips the page again, and there he is. This is the only sketch he's seen so far that she's included herself. They're sitting at opposite ends of a table in an empty diner, and he's looking out the window. There's grass on the other side, and a horse. And she's looking the other way, into the diner's kitchen, but it looks half completed.

"I couldn't finish it," she says softly, like it hurts her to speak any louder. He doesn't want to think of the symbolism, because that would mean that he still has a lot to learn about this girl, this wildfire of a girl that makes the hollow of his chest burn, that makes him want to whisper all of his secrets into her bones. It's a dangerous thought.

He hands her back the sketchbook.

She says, "There's more - "

"That's okay, I've seen enough." And then he gives her a smile. "You're crazy talented, Maya Hart. I don't know why you don't shout it to the world."

"I finally got around to showing it to you," she tells him, looking out into the vast night sky, her chin in her palms. "That's enough for me."

/

She takes him to an art museum on a Saturday night. "Just you and me, Friar. Think of it as a date."

He gives her a wry grin as she loops her arm with his. "You just want me to pay for everything."

Beaming up at him, she says, "You know me so well."

"Like the back of my hand."

She acts as an unofficial tour guide, dragging him to this piece and that piece, reciting the history of it from memory. He notices the way her entire face transforms into something so much brighter when she's telling him about Monet's _Water Lilies_ or Botticelli's _The Birth of Venus_ , and he loves seeing this side of her.

When he asks her how she knows so much, how she seems to have memorized exactly what each exhibit holds, she says, "I needed somewhere to go when my mom couldn't be there. I was fifteen and confused about a lot of things, but art wasn't one of them." She shrugs then. "This place made me feel safe. Besides Riley's, this is the only place that's ever really felt like home. You know?"

He hums his response, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. She nestles close to him, her arm low on his waist, and he asks her about some Salvador Dali painting he doesn't really understand. Tries to find a way to explain to her that the way he feels about her, she feels the same way about art museums.

While she's admiring some of the artwork, barely even paying him any attention, Lucas takes pictures of her standing next to some of them, and drops some cheesy pick up lines like "sorry, was I not supposed to take pictures of the masterpieces?" knowing it'll make her laugh and shake her head at him because he's just so ridiculous. He likes her so much he doesn't know what to do with it all.

"I wish I knew you when we were younger," he tells her as they move on to a diner across the street, sharing a basket of fries and Dr. Pepper. "Do you think we would've been friends?"

Maya grins around the straw, eyes perpetually sparkled with a dangerous kind of mischief. "I probably would've beaten you up."

"I have no doubt you would've tried," he replies. "But you forget that I have a history of bad tempers and bruised knuckles. I think I can hold my own against you."

She rolls her eyes. "Yeah, but you're just _so_ – like, I could beat you up and you'd just take it."

He stays silent because she's right. It's really quite simple: she's an expert in taking his heart in her hands and squeezing it dry until he's just a bag of skin and bones at her feet, and he lets her. She could destroy him completely and he'd let her.

"I would never hurt you though," she continues. "I _could_ , but I would never."

"You know, I'm not too sure about that."

/

They're at a party three weeks later when it happens.

She's drunk, but so is he, and she's leaning her head against his shoulder, watching Riley kiss Zay in the back corner of the kitchen.

"It hurts a little," she confesses to him.

"I know, baby," he whispers. It hurts him that it hurts her. He would do anything to take that pain away. He would do anything to take that sound out of her voice.

Maya turns away from them and circles her arms around his neck, her lips pressing to the dip in his collarbone. His hands settle on her waist and he ignores how easy this feels, how badly he wants it, how much it aches not to be able to touch her.

"Lucas?"

"Yeah, Maya."

"You love me?"

"Yeah." He figures now is as good a time as any to drop the pretenses. "Yeah, I do."

"Make it stop hurting then."

"I don't know how."

She reaches up on her tip toes, pulls him to her by his neck, and her lips are soft. Softer than he would have imagined, with that sharp tongue of hers. He likes the weight of her on him, it's nice, so it takes him a lot longer to pull away from her than if he was sober.

"I – we can't - "

"Please, Lucas." Her voice is quiet, pleading, and he's afraid to look in her eyes. He's so gone for her.

"Don't regret this," he whispers as his lips trail down the side of her neck, and his chest is burning so badly he thinks he'll explode. She shoves them into an empty bedroom, locks the door, and steps out of her dress. "Please don't regret this."

Maya kisses him hard then, trapping his body against the door, and he finds that he likes it rough, if it's with her. Her teeth scrape against his neck, down his collarbone, and she pushes his shirt up and over his head, her hands trailing down his chest. Her skin is soft where he is hard, and he doesn't ever want to stop touching her, doesn't ever want to stop feeling the way her breath hitches in his ear when he does something she likes. He wants to explore her forever, wants to feel her skin mold to his hands. But he knows that he can't, that it's not possible, so he'll take right now, this, if it's the only thing she'll give him.

She's biting curse words into his shoulder when his fingers are inside her, filthy and vulgar, and it's better this way, he thinks. She drags them to the bed and he replaces his fingers with his mouth and he likes the way her body arches into him, like she can't get enough. He can't, either. The blunt of her nails scraping against his scalp sends jolts of electricity through each and every nerve cell and he peppers kisses on the inside of her thighs, spelling out _you, you, you_ with his tongue.

She's whispering apologies into his mouth when he pushes inside her and he can taste the salt on her cheeks. It's a little like acid on his tongue. He thinks, if this is love he doesn't want it anymore. He thinks, she has so much of it in her heart it's leaking from the holes made from the people who were supposed to put her broken pieces back together. He thinks, he loves her still, he loves her still.

And when her mouth opens wide and her pupils are blown out until they're black and when her nails are marking the skin of his back, he thinks - _I love you so much it feels like my insides are spilling out please don't regret this._

After, she presses herself next to him, like maybe her bones can melt into his, and traces her fingers on his chest. His heart won't be quiet, thumping harshly against his rib cage every time her finger gets too close to it.

"I don't, by the way," he hears her whisper a few moments later. "I don't regret it."

Something like relief loosens the knot in his chest, and he breathes just a little bit easier. He tangles his fingers with hers, kisses the top of her hair, and thinks _I have tonight, if nothing else I have tonight_.

/

Maya tells him she has to visit her dad, who lives all the way in California, for two weeks the summer before their senior year of college.

"But that's like all the way across the country," he sputters indignantly, like a small child who didn't get his way. "And I thought you didn't want anything to do with that guy."

She shrugs helplessly. "He's my dad, Lucas. I don't forgive him yet, not even close, but I'm gonna try. And my mom wants me to do this. It's only for two weeks, anyway." She gives him a smirk then. "Also, I think you can manage just fine without me. Dependency isn't healthy for a well-functioning relationship, you know."

"So you'll be okay without Riley then?" There's a hint of venom in his mouth when he says it, and he knows it's kind of a low blow, a dick move, especially from the way her face falls slightly. The last thing he would ever want to do is hurt her, his name on the endless list of men who's disappointed her.

"What the fuck, Lucas," she hisses, shoving his shoulder, and he deserved that. He's betting that she really wants to pour the strawberry smoothie in her hand over his head right now. He won't blame her.

"I just don't know why you refuse to admit it - "

"Admit _what_ \- "

"That you're - "

"Don't you finish that fucking sentence, Friar."

"Okay," he surrenders because he's so weak for her. "Okay, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I didn't mean - "

"Yes you did, Lucas," she says with an exasperated sigh, closing her eyes. "You did."

He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and looks away from her. He's so fucking transparent it's embarrassing. Maybe she feels sorry for him, maybe that's why she lets him stick around.

"Just...be careful," he says then. "And have fun."

She hands him a smile that makes him trip over his words, kisses his cheek, and leaves four days later with his heart in her hands.

They talk all the time as soon as she lands in San Francisco. She's only ever lived in New York, never had the funds to travel elsewhere, so she's excited. She sends him a whole bunch of photos, wide-grin selfies next to well-known landmarks. Sends him silly vines of herself and asks which artsy picture she should post on Instagram, and it makes him smile. He's glad to see her enjoying herself.

She's staying in a hotel for the first week, wanting to experience a new environment without the pressure of her father's presence, and then staying with him the last week. Maya's never really told him, or anyone besides Riley, much about her dad so it makes him nervous a little, that she won't be as happy as she is in this moment. That someone could take that feeling away from her so easily. It terrifies him, how much her happiness means to him.

He tells her he misses her on the sixth day. She rolls her eyes and calls him soft and he doesn't deny it.

"I guess I'm just so used to having you around," he says with a shrug.

Her picture is grainy on the little screen on his phone but he can still see her smile.

She tells him all about the places she's visited and the people she's seen and _Jesus Christ, Friar, it is so fucking hot over here that I start sweating five seconds after going outside._ He smiles the whole time, never taking his eyes off the way her face lights up.

"But I miss you too, Huckleberry. More than I'd like to admit," she tells him then, her voice soft, and it's like a physical ache, the way she's not with him right now. He can tell that she's outside, and because of the time difference it's still light out while the sun just began to set where he is.

"Hey, Shortstack," he says as he sits on a bench inside of a subway station to get away from the rain. "Meet me at Grand Central and 42nd. I'll be the one in a yellow poncho and your name tattooed on my forehead."

Maya's grin is blinding. "Meet me on Maiden Lane," she replies, and somehow it makes it feel like she's not 3000 miles away from him. "I'll be the one in a red dress and your heart on my sleeve."

And he thinks, if this is love he'll take it.


End file.
